[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

But most of all: Text I explicitly calls it wheat, and where 2 calls it "wheat-corn" there is no way that this is a misreading of T's handwriting, since Text 2 was typed!

Timeline time!

- HoME XII, "Of Lembas" - fine handwritten manuscript; late 1950s, as you say. The grain is named as "corn", and described as having "great golden ears" and "white haulm", which seems to just mean the stalks (ie, to make hay/straw). It is noted as fairly hardy, but in a magical sort of way (can grow in anything short of frost, but not if the wind blows from Utumno).

Is it the "haulm" that identifies this as wheat? I don't think anything else there does, but grains are hardly my field!

- NoME, "The Numenorean Catastrophe" - hastily written in black pen, ca. 1959. Tolkien concludes that "I think now that it is best that [Aman] should remain a physical landmass (America!) [sic]. [...] The flora and fauna (even if different in some [?items] from those of Middle-earth) would become ordinary beasts and plants with usual conditions of mortality."

IE: Any distinctive Western species would remain distinct, except that they would become mortal. This implies that eg llamas, redwoods, and maize all previously existed in Aman. It does not mean that wheat did not - it could simply have gone extinct after the Downfall.

My argument is that after this point Tolkien may have come to consider Lembas to be made from maize, not wheat. There would have been no reason to beforehand!

- NoME, "The Making of Lembas", Text 1 - 'extracted from a larger typescript text', ca. 1968. The grain in Lembas is named as wheat.

Interestingly, the word for bread (C.E. khaba) is said to refer originally to most vegetable foods, but "after the coming of corn [= wheat here] was restricted to those made from grain". That kind of implies they had other grains? I'm imagining the Eldar viewing oatmeal and bread as 'basically the same thing, right?'.

- NoME, "The Making of Lembas", Text 2 - 'a hastily written note in black ink', ca. 1968. Seems to be written immediately after Text 1. Says that lembas is made from "meal [?ground] wheat-corn", and then coins the term "Western Corn". Western Corn is now said to have trouble in dim sunlight (different to the HoME XII reference, though maybe still magical). It is also extinct in Middle-earth - twice, actually, it runs out before the Eldar reach Beleriand, is restored by the Noldor, and finally dies out when Galadriel and Arwen leave/die in the Fourth Age.

- NoME, "Note on Elvish Economy" - neat(?) text in black nib-pen, ca. 1968; the paper it's on dates to a month later than those used in the Lembas texts. Talks about Valinorean agriculture, and states that "The grain (of some kind not native to Middle-earth*) was self-sown, and only needed gathering and the scattering of 1/10 (the tithe of Yavanna) of the seed on the field. [...] *From it was descended the grain for lembas."

So the Valinorean grain (not here named as wheat or corn) is definitely a "different kind" to Middle-earth grains. It's hard not to think of the Biblical use of "kind" to mean, roughly, "species" here, but I can't guarantee that's what he meant. If it is, then "Western Corn" is definitely not wheat.

Do wheat or maize self-sow? This article suggests that wheat can, but implies it's not particularly efficient; maize does not, but is noted as coming from a naturally-propagating ancestor.

I don't think this is particularly conclusive either way; for sure, lembas was originally conceived as being made from magic wheat, but the late '50s onwards is when Tolkien was trying to reconcile his Legendarium with the real world! He goes out of his way (NoME, "Of the Land and Beasts of Numenor") to note that the golden trees of Numenor are not magical, despite the Numenoreans thinking they are; he specifically says that certain anachronistic species are not present where they shouldn't be. If (and it's a big if, I know) he stuck with the "Aman becomes America" idea, then I think his use of "Western Corn" is a strong indication that he meant, well, Western Corn.

Are there any text later than NoME "The Numenorean Catastrophe" which discuss the Downfall? Skimming "Myths Transformed", there's a mention in HoME X "Notes on Motives in the Silmarillion" stating that "Aman was removed from the physical world", but CT tentatively dates this to the earlier parts of the transformation period; in fact, I wonder if NoME "The Numenorean Catastrophe" isn't a direct response to it! That text almost begins with "It was physical. Therefore it could not be removed".

HoME X "Aman and Mortal Men" was originally part of the Athrabeth, dated by CT to 1959 (possibly late in the year), so could postdate the NoME text (or rather be written at the same time - the NoME text actually references the Athrabeth!). In discussing conditions in Aman, it says "If it is thus in Aman, or was ere the Change of the World..." This kind of implies that Aman was not physically removed but otherwise remained the same. It would tie in nicely with "The Numenorean Catastrophe"'s apparent conclusion that the physical Aman became America, while the state of Aman became a place of memory. The Eldar, in the Third Age and onwards, became "fear housed only in memory until the true End of Arda" when they passed over the Sea.

One final clue comes from NoME "Elvish Reincarnation", Text 2, dated to 1959 or later. In a note that CT refers to in HoME X, he says that "of course the exact nature of existence in Aman or Eressea after its 'removal' must be dubious and unexplained. Also how 'mortals' could go there at all! The latter not very difficult. Eru commited the Dead of mortals also to Mandos. They waited then a while in recollection before going to Eru. The sojourn of say Frodo in Eressea... was only an extended form of this. [...] So that the sailing on ship was equivalent to death." The context is of a houseless fea reclothing itself in memory, so this seems to fit nicely with the "Numenorean Catastrophe" version.

... unfortunately, none of it says anything about whether the physical continent of Aman was left in place (as America), or simply deleted from the world! Given that in the late '60s (NoME "Dark and Light") he was apparently making the world an elliptical spheroid, I really have no idea what he was thinking.

hS